


Who Was Saved, and Who Wasn’t

by brightephemera



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Brothers, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-13 01:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28770063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightephemera/pseuds/brightephemera
Summary: Vierce confesses his guilty fear about a bitter mission to his brother.
Relationships: Ava Jaxo/Male Republic Trooper, Republic Trooper & OC
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Who Was Saved, and Who Wasn’t

Kirsk leaned back from the starship controls and ran his hands through his rakish brown hair. Off to one side on the _Lissom Lady_ ’s bridge, his older brother Vierce had leaned with forearms on knees, staring moodily at the floor between them. Everything was pretty much going as expected.

Kirsk eyed the hangar around them. Quiet. They weren’t expected anywhere yet. “Vierce? Time for juice and snacks?”

He didn’t look up. “What are you talking about?”

“You're far away, I figured you could use the pick me up.”

“Oh,” he said absently. “I ever tell you about Ava Jaxo?”

“No. Pretty name. Is she pretty?”

“As a picture.” Vierce slumped. “You know, I’ve tried to start this with a paid professional and he just took notes and after page three I stopped talking.”

‘Paid professional’ was the vague yet accurate term applied to his therapist. If anyone had asked Kirsk ten years ago what Vierce Savins would be doing to blow off steam, therapy would not have made the list. But something about Jorgan and Elara and whatever the hell else happened, and there he went. Except, apparently, for this.

“I killed her,” said Vierce.

“Whoa,” blurted Kirsk. Vierce rarely praised the people he shot. “Imp? Separatist?”

“Loyal Sergeant in our own Republic Army.”

“So why…?”

Kirsk had talked him into a T-shirt for the trip, but there was something about him, even curled over his casual outfit, even fifteen sectors away from his job, that said that he was holding something together using only his dogtags and his will. He did that sometimes. Now he spoke. “We were breaking out a POW camp on a satellite station when the inevitable trap sprung. We could evacuate all the prisoners under Imp fire, but the only way to keep the shields in place was to vent the systems level. Which was where Jaxo was doing her thing. And I? I said yes. Vent the systems level.” He looked lost. “She…we were on the link. She wasn’t tough. She begged for her life and instead I looked at the order that would kill her and I said yes.”

“But the prisoners got out?”

He shrugged. “Every last one.”

“How many?”

“How many justify her death? If I told you ten? Ten thousand? One? Which number makes what I did okay?”

“How many were there, Vierce.”

“Three hundred sixty.”

“That doesn’t balance the minus one.”

He looked mad before he realized Kirsk was agreeing with him. “You get that,” he said.

“I know how you think.”

He was talking. He was talking about this, about one of his treasured scars. Clearly, articulately, willingly, with barely a shiver of self-consciousness. That was a long time coming.

“You would've found a way to save the day,” added Vierce. “Stars, I wanted to have someone there who could save the day. But I didn't. All I had was me.”

“Don’t think about it. Tell me about her. Was I going to meet her?” Kirsk said it with a small smile.

“Maybe. She would’ve loved you. All energy all the time, and she knew exactly what she wanted.”

“Sounds too lively for you.”

“Yeah, well, I fixed that.” Vierce sucked in a breath. “I dated her, I…held her, and then I just…and there wasn’t even any blood. Shouldn’t there have been blood on my hands?”

Always with the deserving and the earning. “No. The point of that tableau was not to punish you. The point was that a lot of lovers and husbands and wives and parents got to go home, and they got that second chance because of you. And because of her. The both of you.”

“She promised to stop teasing me if I saved her. The stupidest in-joke, when we flirted. She was so right on Coruscant, so bright. She didn’t want to give her life.”

“Most people don’t, when you get down to it. You’re kind of an exception, which is something you might want to work on.”

“I kill a lot of people. I used to be proud of that.”

At this moment Kirsk's entire brain exited and hovered, floating. Used to be proud. Used to be. Vierce wasn't anymore. Whatever he had seen, heard, or felt out there over the past three years with the Republic, it had softened that Mandalorian spine. Kirsk and Mama had been trying since forever, but Kirsk couldn't fix his brother. He could only listen, tease to get his mind off things, and hope.

Vierce went on. “I didn’t much like killing someone on my side. All these people say I saved them, but I’m not proud.”

“You don’t have to be. It’s over and some good came of it. That can be enough.”

“But it doesn’t end there. The worst thing is wondering. What if I have to make that choice again?”

“You'll eat yourself up inside. Then you'll save a zillion lives aga—”

“I'm not sure that's true!”

Silence, abrupt. Abrupt and absolute. There was no redirect. There was no softening. There was just what he’d said.

“What?” Kirsk said stupidly.

“I’m not sure I would choose them again. Not over Elara. That's the part I didn't tell the paid professional.”

“No one's going to ask you to make that choice with Elara.” Anyone who did would be in a world of pain. The trap hadn’t been designed that could stop that.

“I have to be ready,” Vierce said doggedly.

“No. You don't.” He improvised. Vierce was a man of square grids and ordered plans. If something wasn't in the mission briefing he might never see it. Kirsk offered disruption. And here, disruption was badly needed. “The idea that that nightmare happens again? What are the odds? Are you going to worry yourself sick every day on a maybe? Are you going to poison the life you have on the off chance it ends wrong? You're not ready to make that call today. You can't ever be ready, not really. So trust yourself to react in the moment. Because no amount of preparation for an impossible choice is going to make it rest easy in your mind for all the days and years you have to live.”

Vierce didn’t move a muscle.

Which was just maddening. “Come on, that was the most mature thing I've said in my life and I don't even get a grumble?”

Vierce scoffed. The corner of his mouth turned up. “I’ll think on it. I can’t ever tell Elara, and I don’t want to exhaust my professional’s notebook, so…that just happened.” Something seemed to sting him. “Anyone ever asks, Ava went out bravely, all right? That’s what I told her family.” When he told them in person, which of course he had. “She’s the hero that got the prisoners out. That’s all anyone should know.”

“You got it.”

“Fine. That’s…” he looked up and around the bridge as though surprised to be there. “Enough.”  
  
“It’s okay. You’ve bailed me out enough times, I figure I owe you.”

Vierce studied him with the brown Savins eyes, like they could always stare at each other. Something seemed to relax. Then he nodded. “All right. It was pretty mature. We good for the Nikto Fever tonight?”

Good. “Oh, you haven’t even seen the bar yet. This town knows how to party.”

“You find the hats?”

Vierce, Kirsk’s brother. The one outside invasions and wars. Bossy, stubborn, and a loyal Huttball fan. Good company, in his way. Kirsk made a face at him. “I misplace them once and I never live it down.”

“I don’t forget.”

“You should put that on your nametag, brother.” But then, everyone already knew.

**Author's Note:**

> “Inevitable”: cannot be evaded. Used here sarcastically, as in “of course there was a deadly trap there is always a deadly trap,” but also literally, “this is a trap he could not escape.”


End file.
